In the Mouth of the Tiger

by Lynette Silver

  We sat on the verandah, the Archdeacon puffing a small cigar while I sipped tea. He was younger than his appearance suggested, a good-looking man with kind eyes and a humorous mouth. I’d not really got to know him at the time of our wedding, and I now wished I’d made an effort. He was the sort of person who made a good friend.

  ‘My Uncle Claude knew your husband,’ he said. ‘They met at Maxine Elliott’s place in France. Denis tells me you knew her too.’

  I was so surprised that my cup hung frozen in mid-air. Maxine Elliott. The south of France. The Château de l’Horizon. They all seemed a million miles away. I had a sudden, vivid memory of Maxine staring at me with her candid grey-blue eyes. ‘You understand, don’t you, Norma?’ she had said. ‘We all meet up later, don’t we? Somehow, somewhere, we all meet up again. And laugh about the game we’ve all been playing.’ I wished I’d remembered those words the day before, when I’d been with Catherine. But then, they would probably have not meant anything to her in the immediacy of her pain.

  ‘How did your uncle meet Maxine?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, he was by way of being a bit of a hero many years ago. A pioneer of aviation. He caught Maxine’s fancy, and she supported him and his dream of flying around the world. He used to land his plane at Heartsburn Manor, her home in England before the Great War.’

  He fitted the picture, I saw that. A man of action, and if his nephew was any guide, darned good looking too. I smiled. The talk of Maxine, of another, finer world, had cheered me up immensely.

  The Archdeacon sat up and stubbed out his cigar. ‘You know you’ve got to try and get away, don’t you?’ he asked. ‘For the children’s sake, and for the sake of the baby you are carrying.’

  ‘I know my duty,’ I said a little stiffly. ‘But it’s not quite that simple. If we make a break for it, there is every chance we’ll die anyway. I’ve heard that eighty per cent of vessels leaving Singapore are sunk within the first day. If I am to die – if the boys and I are to die – I’d prefer it to be on our terms. And I’d like to be by Denis’s side, come what may.’

  Graham-White took out another of his little cigars, nipped the end off and lit it. He leaned back as if he had all the time in the world, and let the smoke from his first puff spiral up to the roof. He was the picture of composure. Little did I know that inside he was writhing with anxiety. The Bishop’s party was to board the Blue Star Line Empire Star that afternoon, and he had bare minutes to convince me to return to Bishopscourt with him.

  ‘It’s Denis, isn’t it?’ he asked finally. ‘If Denis were coming with you, you would take your chance on the ocean?’

  I drew a deep breath. ‘Of course I would.’

  He winked at me. A slow, deliberate wink that said as plain as day that Denis would be on the Empire Star with us. I had absolutely no idea whether he had the right to convey that impression, or whether it was an outrageous bluff.

  ‘How could it be that Denis would be on board?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s too valuable to leave behind,’ Graham-White said. ‘Knows too much about who is who and what’s happening in Malaya and in the region. And the Japs know who he is. If they caught him they would torture him for information and then kill him. Why do you think they blasted poor old Alec Dean’s place off the face of the earth? They thought it was Whitelawns.’

  I sat with my mouth open, staring into the bland, smiling face. ‘I’d go with you if I knew for a fact that Denis would be on the Empire Star,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Can you promise me that he will be?’

  Graham-White didn’t flicker an eyebrow. He just sat there in silence, smoking his little cigar. And then, almost theatrically, he put his finger to his lips, lowered his eyes to mine, and nodded slowly.

  We left for Bishopscourt almost immediately. There was no room in the Model-T for Agnes and Christine, so I hugged them tight and pushed money into their hands. The sooner they could get rid of their starched uniforms and resume life as ‘natives’ the better. The Japanese picked on anyone who had had anything to do with ‘Imperialists’.

  I hugged Amah especially tight. ‘Take anything you can from Whitelawns,’ I said. ‘I’d like you and Chu Lun to have it rather than the Japs. Please feed and water the horses.’ I wanted to say so much more. I wanted to tell her how much I had enjoyed our times together. How I had loved arranging the flowers with her in the cool of the morning. Preparing for a dinner party, the two of us arguing gently about how the table should be set. Rearranging the furniture in one of the rooms, just because we wanted to. But Archdeacon Graham-White was honking the horn and I had to go.

  This time I didn’t look back.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The drive from Whitelawns to Bishopscourt was an almost surreal experience – a tiny, dreamlike interlude in the reality of war. I sat in the front seat of the Model-T feeling almost prim, with the Archdeacon sitting stiff and upright beside me as he navigated the smoky streets with precise turns of the old-fashioned timber steering wheel. The road was littered with wrecked cars and bomb craters and at one stage sirens began their urgent wail, but somehow I felt impervious to these dreadful things, as though cocooned in an impregnable bubble of peace and sanity. I suppose it was reaction to the strain I had been under, and relief that our fate was no longer in my hands alone. I also think that the Archdeacon’s calm demeanour had something to do with it. He sat there chatting away as easily as if he was making conversation at a garden party, and I couldn’t help responding in kind. ‘His Grace has been so very busy,’ he said solemnly. ‘I know he intended calling on you and Denis out at Whitelawns, but with the bombing and so on . . . I do hope you will both forgive him.’

  I sat back into my seat, the tension of the past hours and days oozing from me. ‘Of course Denis and I forgive him,’ I said, feeling almost like a character from Barchester Towers. ‘The Bishop has been awfully busy. He’s doing sterling work. Real work, where it counts.’

  ‘I know His Grace feels privileged to be able to serve his flock.’

  I glanced back at the boys, and they too seem to have been affected by Graham-White’s infectious calm. They had forgotten their fractiousness and were models of decorum, sitting amongst our bags with toffee apples in their hands. Precisely how the Archdeacon had managed toffee apples at such a time still puzzles me.

  ‘You are being very kind,’ I said sincerely. ‘You must have much more important things to do than ferrying people around through this madhouse.’

  The Archdeacon reached out and took my hand. ‘You don’t understand, my dear. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – as important or rewarding as looking after people in their hour of need. I should be thanking you for making an old stick like me feel useful.’

  A Zero flashed past at rooftop height just as we turned into Glebe Drive, but Graham-White ignored it completely. ‘His Grace is assembling the evacuation party in the morning room,’ he said conversationally. ‘Would you mind awfully if I just dropped you at the front door? I have another dear lady to collect, and time is not on our side . . .’

  And then the jaunty, upright car was putt-putting away up the street, a vision from another age.

  The Bishop himself met us at the front door, and ushered us into one of the reception rooms to join others of the evacuation party. There were about fifty people there, mainly wives and children of church workers, Government officials and Service people. The Bishop clapped solemnly for attention, and then spoke to us for perhaps twenty minutes, putting us at our ease, checking each of our names against his list and handing out boarding permits. He told us that we were scheduled to board the Empire Star later that afternoon, and that the ship was due to sail the next day.

  And then he bowed his head and led us in a simple prayer that asked for God’s protection for ourselves and for those we were leaving behind. Bishop Wilson was an impressive man, tall and courteous and with a strong face and a deep, reassuring voice. He had earned a tremendous reputation for charity and compassion during the blitz
on Singapore, having converted his cathedral into a makeshift hospital, and his home into a clearing-house for refugees.

  The prayer reminded me of a task I had been avoiding but could put off no longer. I had cut my ties with my mother but the thought that she might still be in Singapore weighed on me more than I cared to admit. I went up to the Bishop, a little embarrassed but determined to do something. ‘I am awfully worried about my mother,’ I said diffidently. ‘I know it sounds odd, but I’ve completely lost touch with her. We . . . drifted apart. Rather far apart. I don’t know if she is in Singapore or not, but just in case she is I’d like to try and contact her. Our telephone at Whitelawns has been out of order since last night and I was wondering if I might use one here?’

  Bishop Wilson looked at me with a surprising degree of understanding. ‘My dear, dear Mrs Elesmere-Elliott. Your concern reflects credit on you but there is absolutely no need to be worried. Julia left for England on the Duchess of Bedford days ago, and her ship got away quite safely.’ Then he smiled. ‘Archdeacon Graham-White was wondering if he should volunteer that information. Clearly he judged it best to wait for your inquiry.’

  Archdeacon Graham-White was a far better shepherd to his flock than I deserved.

  I cannot for the life of me remember the order of events after that. Pictures come to my mind, crystal clear but disordered, like brilliant fragments of a shattered work of art. I know we were taken in an open truck through the streets of Singapore, and that at one point the truck stopped and we spent what seemed like hours sitting in the smoky sunshine while explosions rocked the road ahead of us. The children were thirsty and the younger ones were crying. Then we were sitting under trees in one of the parks while the Bishop’s representative, a short, fat, florid man with a comfortingly authoritative voice, argued with soldiers manning a roadblock. Eventually we were on the wharves, relishing the coolness of the sea breeze, waiting to board the ship that was to take us to safety.

  The Empire Star was a business-like vessel of about 10,000 tons, with lots of masts and derricks and an air of hard, utilitarian efficiency about her. She was tied up alongside, busy unloading trucks and field guns. I couldn’t help thinking that it was far too late to be delivering such materiel – we were virtually giving it to the Japanese.

  The Bishop’s representative, who introduced himself as Mr Rose, assembled his bedraggled party in a cleared area between bombed-out godowns and addressed us in a foghorn voice. ‘I am sorry things have been a bit of a shambles,’ he said. ‘But it won’t be long now. We are only waiting for the unloading to be completed, and then you will be allowed on board. There are six cabins available for our party, so you will all be very crowded. But I suggest you don’t complain – there will be many hundreds aboard when we sail tomorrow who will have no cabins at all. They will be accommodated in the holds. I am sure many of them would be quite happy to swap with you if you so wish.’

  I laughed at the attempted humour but several of the women around me remained sour, one of them giving me a stare of frank dislike. I rather gathered that they were used to five-star service and were far from happy.

  Then the sirens sounded, howling all around us like banshees in the smoky semi-darkness. We rushed and scrambled to one of the above-ground shelters, a sort of cave made of sandbags, and sat in the smothering heat while the world outside went mad. There was the sharp banging of the ack-ack gun situated just outside the entrance to the shelter, the scream of the dive-bombers, the deep, reverberating thud of detonating bombs. I have a picture in my mind, as clear as any photograph: I am sitting in the semi-darkness, with frightened women all around me. We are all fanning ourselves desperately with Chinese paper fans, as if the activity somehow kept us a little safer. The children sit on the floor between our feet, looking up at us for reassurance: to them, the sound itself is the enemy. They don’t understand that if you can hear the bombs they aren’t going to hurt you.

  It was a long raid and when we finally emerged it was almost evening, and so dark that the fresh fires burning along Collier Quay cast a ruddy glow over the broken wharves and the gaunt line of ships. The world looked different. It was different. People had died, buildings had been destroyed, vessels had been sunk.

  We boarded the Empire Star about seven o’clock, and it was sheer heaven to have a cabin to go to – somewhere to put down our luggage and to call home. The boys and I were sharing a four-berth cabin with three other women and another four children – ten of us in all. But it was a biggish room, and it had the extraordinary luxury of an en suite bathroom. We were all immensely happy with it, even the spoilt mems who had been used to five-star luxury.

  On that day, 10 February 1942, over five hundred civilians died on the Singapore docks and in the sea around them. Denis had been in the thick of the mayhem, ferrying evacuees out to the ships in the Roads and escorting escaping vessels through the minefields that guarded the harbour. He had no idea where his wife or children were. At one stage he had passed the bodies of children of Tony’s and Bobby’s ages, their blond hair streaming in the water. He had not been able to stop, and laboured for the rest of the day with the awful thought that we might all be dead.

  At sunset he trekked out to Whitelawns, bumping down Tanah Merah Besar Road in the little Marvelette to find the house empty and forlorn. Chu Lun appeared, faithful and unperturbed, a bottle of Tiger beer in one hand, and told Denis where we were. The knowledge that we were on board a ship in Keppel Harbour was cold comfort: he knew many of those who had gone to the harbour that day were dead.

  The next morning we woke to find that the pall of smoke over Singapore had grown even darker, so that the city was perpetually bathed in a deep, sinister twilight. Through the smoke we glimpsed Japanese planes, always in perfect formation, like schools of orderly goldfish swimming through murky water. And always there was the sharp bark of our ack-ack guns and the dull crump of bombs.

  I’d spent a sleepless night worrying about Denis. It had struck me that Archdeacon Graham-White’s theatrical hint that my husband would be joining us might have been no more than a bluff to get me and the children on board. A well-intended bluff but a bluff for all that. How could a clergyman possibly know about naval appointments? But even as the thought struck me I dismissed it. There was something awfully reassuring about Graham-White. And anyway, I couldn’t afford to have any doubts: hope was all I had to cling to. I got up from my berth and picked my way amongst the children sleeping on the floor to the porthole to stare out at the dark, smouldering city. He was out there somewhere, my beloved Denis, probably worrying where we were, wondering whether we were alive or dead. I pictured him striding onto the wharf full of life and confidence, and looking up at the ship to catch my eye and smile.

  But as each hour passed, and as our departure time drew inexorably closer, my confidence that he would suddenly appear began to slip away. I took the boys and positioned the three of us on the top deck overlooking the gangway, scrutinising everyone who came aboard. There were a lot of people to scrutinise, an almost continuous stream that did not falter even during the air raids. I recognised many coming aboard. There were several of Robbie Draper’s radio technicians, journalists from the Far East Bureau, and a crowd of senior RAF officers from Seletar whom we had often seen at the Swimming Club.

  Just after midday, Australian military nurses began arriving. There were perhaps fifty or sixty of them, fit but desperately tired-looking young women in neat grey uniforms. It had been rumoured that we had been waiting only for them and that we would sail immediately they were aboard, so I felt a thrill of concern when the last one filed aboard with Denis still not in sight.

  But we didn’t sail. As the afternoon dragged on and the pall of smoke grew thicker, more and more people trooped up the gangway. The ship had been built for a crew of eighteen, with cabins for twenty-three passengers, but by three o’clock in the afternoon there were over a thousand people on board and they were still coming.

  By five o’clock the crowd
on the wharf had become an unruly mob. Arguments and fights were breaking out at the foot of the gangway as desperate men tried to get their wives and families aboard, or tried to get aboard themselves. There was one nasty incident when a man pulled a gun on the gangway guard, threatening to shoot if he didn’t get his way. Two burly stokers jumped him, and the last I saw of him was being carried away, trussed like a turkey and screaming in a combination of fear and rage.

  Suddenly there was a disturbance on deck. Twenty or so Australian soldiers had forced their way up the gangway and were being ordered to leave. But their leader, a young soldier in his early twenties, his face pale but determined in the murky light, refused point-blank. Military police arrived at the run with pistols drawn, but still the soldiers stood their ground, insisting that the rest of their unit was on board and that they too had been ordered to evacuate. Captain Capon, the ship’s master, was not pleased by this unexpected incursion and, to prevent any similar incident, gave orders to get underway immediately.

  I scanned the crowd desperately from my position on the top deck, screaming out Denis’s name. I think I was becoming a little hysterical, and it was Tony, pulling at my hand and trying to say something, that brought me to my senses.

  ‘Daddy has to fight the war, Mummy,’ he said seriously. ‘But he’s going to swim out after us. He promised.’

  I looked down at my little boy and smiled as sweetly and as confidently as I could. ‘He might not be able to swim out after us after all,’ I said. ‘But if he can’t, he’ll catch the next ship and join us in England.’

  ‘We’re not going to England,’ Tony said impatiently. ‘We’re going to Australia.’

  The Empire Star was now leaving the dock, the strip of black water between her side and the wharf widening perceptibly as I watched. And then there was Denis. He seemed to appear from nowhere, cool and crisp in his white uniform, striding purposefully towards the gangway as if he intended to jump the widening gap.